NEWS

Matty in action around Oulton Park on Saturday – Image courtesy of David Nelson

Matty and team-mate Marcus Hoggarth will start Easter Monday’s British GT races at Oulton Park from seventh and twelfth on the grid after Saturday’s qualifying sessions in Cheshire

Whereas normally the qualifying times of both drivers are combined to determine grid position, the Oulton Park race format of two, one hour races saw Hoggarth’s laps decide the #29 car’s starting spot for the first and Matty’s time, the second.

After only agreeing his return to the series with In2Racing last Wednesday, Matty was prepared for a steep learning curve over the course of the Oulton Park meeting, having ran fewer than 10 laps in pre-season testing in the team’s McLaren 570S GT4.

However, the scale of the challenge the 20-year-old is facing at the start of the season was dramatically demonstrated when, despite going over a second faster than his qualifying effort in an Aston Martin Vantage in 2016, he was only able to set the 12th fastest time in his qualifying group.

The 1:44.134 lap was almost a three quarters of a second improvement on his fastest practice time, demonstrating how his pace will improve with further seat time, but leads to reduced expectations from Monday’s races.

In the other session, Hoggarth undertook a three lap run and improved consistently across his timed efforts. Opening his account with a 1:45.960, the York based driver improved by the best part of seven tenths of a second on his middle effort, before finding a further tenth on his final lap.

It made him the second quickest Am graded driver in the session, trailing the fastest, reigning GT4 champion Mike Johnson, by less than half a second.

Monday’s hour long races take the green flag at 11:10 and 15:30 with both broadcast live via Front Runner Sport, the UK’s only free-to-air sports channel

Presented by Alexandra Legouix and called by respected commentators David Addison and Martin Haven, Front Runner TV can be found on Freeview channel 91, Sky channel 468 and Freesat channel 250.